Using state-of-the-art sonar, researchers at Columbia University recently made the first comprehensive map of the items submerged in New York City's harbors. Supplementing those findings with historical data, New York magazine reported the inventory’s highlights in May: a...

At the biennial World Beard and Moustache Championships in Anchorage, Alaska, four local heroes defeated the usually dominant German contingent. The 18-category pageant, which took place in May, included overall champ David Traver of Girdwood, Alaska, whose woven chin hair...

In March, when retired NYPD officer John Comparetto was approached at gunpoint in a men’s room at a Holiday Inn near Harrisburg, Pa., he quietly handed over his wallet. But once the robber left, Comparetto summoned some of the 300 narcotics officers attending a convention...

According to police, first-time bank robber Jason Durant, 32, reported to a hospital in New Milford, Conn., shortly after stealing money from the National Iron Bank in April. As Durant fled the crime scene, he accidentally tumbled down a steep hill behind the bank, losing control of his stash...

In April, the district attorney in Vilas County, Wis., announced that he was seeking volunteers for a forensic test to help his case against Douglas Plude, 42. Plude is scheduled to stand trial in the death of his wife. The volunteers, who must be female, about 5-foot-8 and 140 pounds, will...

In April, policeman Kristopher Weston apprehended a murder suspect about 20 minutes after the crime in East St. Louis, Ill. Weston’s feat was such a nice piece of police work that the mayor called Weston before the city council to commend him. Five minutes after Weston left...

In April, University of Kansas researchers disclosed that a single tax provision in a 2004 law allowed U.S. multinational corporations to largely avoid federal taxes on foreign profits—a move that earned a typical company $220 for every $1 the company had spent lobbying Congress to enact...

In April, police in Copley Township, Ohio, were called to a restaurant where Erik Salmons, 39, was allegedly intoxicated and annoying customers. Officers declined to arrest him but did insist that he leave his truck in the parking lot and call someone for a ride home. Salmons complied; however, at home, Salmons decided that...

A high-school student in Oakton,Va., was suspended for two weeks in March when she took her birth-control pill during the lunch break at school. During those two weeks away from class, the girl discovered that, in comparison, county rules required only one week’s suspension for being high on heroin while at school.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) recently postponed its program to rejuvenate quarter-century-old Trident missile warheads because no one could remember how to make a key component of the weapons, according to a March report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Gao...

It had long been considered a backwoods version of an urban legend, but in March the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department reported its first documented case of a deer hunter who attempted to avoid detection after illegally shooting a doe by gluing antlers onto its head. Marcel Fournier, 19, used epoxy and lag...

Canadian filmmaker Rob Spence recently said that he would install a prosthetic eye with a camera and wireless transmitter into one of his eye sockets (the eye had already been removed as the result of a childhood accident). He hopes to control the prosthetic eye in the same way that his muscles control his good eye,...

In February, Elizabeth Russell, 45, and her 13-year-old daughter were arrested in Hartford, Conn., and charged with shoplifting from a Kohl’s department store. Upon hearing of the arrests, her husband, Daryll, 47, and son, Jonathan, 19, arrived at the police station to bail them out. However, a quick check revealed that...

In Airdrie, Alberta, in January, police officers responded to a report from Ralph McCall Elementary School that a man was standing in the yard yelling with a portable loudspeaker toward a group of kids. Allegedly, the man was calling out, "Girls in the field, come over to my truck, come pet my dog." When nearby adults started...

In January 2008, London's The Sun reported on a rare practice in which a tattoo needle is used to ink a design into the sclera, which is the white part of the eyeball. Only a handful of people are known to have undergone this procedure, but Oklahoma state senators were so alarmed that they passed legislation through...

While working on a Pentagon contract in January, University of California researchers announced their success at rigging a live flower beetle with electrodes and a radio receiver to enable scientists to control the insect's flight remotely. Pulses sent to the bug's muscles and optic lobes can command it to take off, turn...

In January, police arrested John West, 20, and Ashley Sorensen, 20, in Auburn, Calif., after the twosome allegedly swiped the tires and rims off of a woman’s car. The pair supposedly placed the tires and rims inside their car and drove off, before violating a cardinal rule by returning to the crime scene to see if the...

In December, the city council in Brighton, Mich., passed an ordinance making it illegal for anyone to "annoy another person” in public, "by word of mouth, sign or motions." Violators can be ticketed and fined. News That Sounds Like a Joke: Michael Reed, 50, was charged with attempted robbery of Eddie's Fried Chicken in Fort...

In a moment reminiscent of the Three Stooges, inmates Regan Reti, 20, and Tiranara White, 21, played the fools while trying to escape from custody. In January, Reti and White, who had been booked separately for different crimes on New Zealand's North Island and were handcuffed together for security at Hastings...

(1) While investigating a robbery at The Beer Store in January, Toronto police officers said they parked their cruiser by some nearby railroad tracks. Later, after a train had crushed the cruiser, they admitted that it had probably been parked "a little bit on the tracks." (2) A 68-year-old driver got stuck on railroad tracks...

Along with the cold, harsh months of winter comes the annual tragedy of young kids who couldn’t resist the age-old experiment of seeing what would happen if they tried to lick a metal pole in subzero temperatures. This winter it happened on successive days: A 10-year-old boy attempted the feat in Hammond, Ind., on...

In several dozen cities across the country, certain men and women have taken to dressing in homemade superhero costumes and patrolling marginal neighborhoods in an effort to deter crime. Phoenix's Green Scorpion, New York City's Terrifica, Orlando's Master Legend and Indianapolis' Mr. Silent...

In November, the British government was poised to reclassify lap-dancing clubs from "entertainment" to "sexual encounter” establishments, and thus impose tougher licensing standards. But the industry's trade association insisted to a Parliamentary committee that the clubs are not sexual. "The entertainment...

In November, Joseph Goetz, 48, was charged with trying to rob the Susquehanna Bank in Springettsbury Township, Pa., even though he had to leave empty-handed. The bank had just opened for the day, and cash hadn’t yet been delivered to tellers' stations. Employees said that Goetz was highly irritated...

In November, the Great American Insurance Co., based in Cincinnati, sought a declaration in federal court in Houston that it was not liable to pay the death benefits from a 2007 office fire because the three victims did not die from “fire.” The company pointed to an exclusion in the policy for death by “pollution"—thought by most...